


Bits and Bobs

by Ladycat



Series: Shadow'verse [11]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I didn’t think vampires would, um, like this kind of thing.” There’s a lilt at the end of the sentence, indecision keeping it from being neither statement nor question, trapped somewhere in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bits and Bobs

The beer is crisp, carbonation bursting on the tongue as a too-cold glass numbs his fingers, condensation beading on his skin. He sips, slow and savoring, no matter how many times he mocks the idea of beer that is cold and golden colored instead of the amber-black richness he’s supposed to prefer. Around him the night is singing, insects and night creatures about their business, while stars watch from above, cold light examining the proceedings with a judge’s deliberation.

When he closes his eyes, he can still see her.

“Can you hold this?”

Spike doesn’t bother opening his eyes, merely holding out his right hand, palm flat and accepting for whatever it is that needs holding. The object is cylindrical, wood that had once been smooth made rough with use and age. It is slightly warm to the touch and smells earthy and rich, loam so sweet it becomes its own perfume.

“I didn’t think vampires would, um, like this kind of thing.” There’s a lilt at the end of the sentence, indecision keeping it from being neither statement nor question, trapped somewhere in between. Normal. It’s endearing, even after so long and so much, but Spike wishes the reasons behind it were less ambiguous.

“Used to help, sometimes,” he says. “Bring bits and bobs I’d find.”

Tara’s laughter is breathy and faint, almost hesitant, but it is full of hearth-rugs and mulled wine and always makes him feel warm. “Off the back of a truck?”

He smiles, eyes still closed. “Sometimes.” Live as long and as varied a life as he has, and you develop strange contacts. He likes that, always has, finding out the odd and the odder to rack up points inside his own mind—and it’s always the random finds that impress people most. This, at least, is easy. A few words here, a hint there, and he’s being brought to darkened rooms where he can’t breathe for the strength of it, offered this choice and that by a human too stupid to tremble, too greedy to deny him. “Sometimes I’d buy ’em, all nice and legal.”

“Legal? I’m pretty sure you couldn’t do anything legal if you _tried_ , Spike.” Her humor is wicked and unexpected, offered out like gifts from a shy five year old uncertain of her reception.

He thinks, sometimes, about why Tara’s so reluctant, so afraid to find comfort in her own skin. Other times he daydreams about what he’d like to do to the two figures he knows he can blame, a portly, stupid boy attempting to beard himself like a man, while a scarecrow frowns down in disapproving impotence.

He wonders if she knows they failed.

“Oh, that hurts,” he teases right back, still smiling as he fills his voice with abject misery. “That _wounds_ me, really. Telling me that I can’t do things on the up and up?”

“Well,” Tara says, deliberate and sure and so even that most of the others never understand she’s mocking, “you really can’t. I think it offends you on some, um, microscopic level. Being good.”

“Love, I am _always_ good,” he purrs, certain that his advances will be taken as the empty gestures they are. “And I’m even better when I’m bad.”

She giggles, a girlish sound that masks the lady within. The comparisons make him ache, sadness for what’s gone tempered only slightly by relief that this type of presence isn’t completely lost forever. It’s pragmatic, in some ways—this gentleness is desperately needed. But its selfish, too, and Spike is at peace with that. He’s never been dismayed at his own greed before and has no intentions of starting now.

He feels the heat of her hands moments before fingers—cool, surprisingly—brush against his palm, removing the object he’s forgotten he holds. “Thanks. You, um. You know you don’t have to be here, right? I mean... I don’t think something’s going to try and hurt me. Here.”

Spike knows they’re both hearing Xander’s frantic ‘don’t borrow trouble’ speech, the same one he’d given Dawn just a few hours before when she’d made a similar comment. It’s truth, though—not the borrowing trouble, but the safety. Spike’s made certain of that.

“Not here for guard-duty,” he answers. It’s curt, more so than he intended, and he doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that Tara’s stilled. “Look, just. Don’t mind about me, all right?”

He opens his eyes, turning back to beer that’s gone too warm and too flat to taste good. Tara’s watching him, he knows, eyes wide and solemn in the darkness. He can’t look at them, see the mirrors they try so hard to be, so he swallows the rest of his drink and thinks about getting another. Maybe she’s chilled another glass for him, just one of many little gestures that make his skin sit funny since he never asks and she should never know to offer.

“Yes,” she says eventually. “You are. But... it’s not for me.”

“Look,” he starts. “I know you lot don’t like me hanging around, but—”

The palm of her hand is soft, the fingers oddly callused as they grip his. There’s real strength in her, enough that Spike’ll hurt her if he tries to break free, so he stays where he is, trying not to shiver out and away from compassion that lays over his skin like sunlight. Her voice is kind. “It’s for her, isn’t it?”

“Gotta use more than just a pronoun, what with Sparky and me being the only men about.”

Tara’s smile is plush and amused and she isn’t letting go. “He hates when you call him that. It’s fun. And you know which ‘her’ I mean, because otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me roses and night-blooming jasmine.”

He looks at her then: hair escaping from a pony-tail; ratty clothes that are too big and threadbare in places, obviously worn and beloved; dirt smudges high on her cheekbones and on her chin, highlighting the bone-structure underneath. Her expression is earnest and warm, with a wisdom that belies barely twenty years of life. She is _old_ to him, not just one girl so much as the newest link in an ancient chain, like gypsies with magic that is green, and loving, and more deadly than any demon ever could be.

She is beautiful.

“I’m glad it’s you,” he says. “I’m glad it’s you that’s tending Joyce’s garden.”

Her trowel makes furrows in the earth, green seedlings retaining their color even in the moonlight. “I can teach you, if you want. To take care of it.”

He leans back against his elbows, eyes on the clouds that dance in between the stars. There’s a storm on the horizon, rain-scent riding on winds he doesn’t think Tara can sense yet. It’s moving fast, racing towards the ocean, and Spike stays there: just breathing for a long moment. The flowers he brought Tara aren’t old enough to bloom yet, but already Spike feels wreathed in their fragrance. Tara is a better gardener than Joyce was, carefully spacing the plants so they’ll have room to grow, arranging them so that even now, young and new, they are beautiful to look at.

The rain will only help them.

Standing, he recaptures her hand to pull her to her feet. “I already know,” he says, and leads her inside just as small, fat drops darken the porch-step.


End file.
